


4 am Knows All My Secrets

by tinylilremus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale learns to sleep, Cuddling, Established Relationship, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, there's only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 00:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20200522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinylilremus/pseuds/tinylilremus
Summary: Aziraphale hasn't slept in six thousand years – by choice, mind you – and doesn't intend to start now. Being that vulnerable for those eight hours scares him more than he cares to admit. However, being with Crowley night after night might be starting to change his mind.





	4 am Knows All My Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while now, but this past weekend I saw three separate artworks of Aziraphale and Crowley in pyjamas or cuddled in bed and knew that the universe was telling me to get my shit together and just write it. So here we are.
> 
> For those interested, all three are incredibly adorable and you should go love them too:
> 
> [khiroptera](https://khiroptera.tumblr.com/post/186820372175/making-sure-crowley-has-lovely-dreams-about)  
[luftballons99](https://luftballons99.tumblr.com/post/186226982701/the-j-stands-for-just-cuddle-with-me-already)  
[halcyon1796](https://halcyon1796.tumblr.com/post/185728835986)

_“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4 am knows all my secrets.” _

_**– **Poppy Z. Brite_

* * *

Not for the first time, an enormous snore rips through the silence of the flat, causing Aziraphale to jump and the ink from his fountain pen to splatter, scarring his meticulous notes with unsightly black spots.

“Oh bugger,” he says, setting down the pen and leaning back in his chair, just in time for another loud snore. Annoyed as he is at accidentally ruining over an hour of work, he can’t help but smile at the second snore. It’s a reminder that he’s in what is now _their_ flat and that the demon he loves is just a few rooms away, fast asleep in the bed that he knows is now supposed to be for them to share. Not that he’s shared it yet. In his over six thousand years on Earth, he’s never slept and doesn’t really see the point in starting now.

“_Point_, Angel?” was Crowley’s response when Aziraphale told him this. “There’s no _point_ to sleeping – at least not for us. It’s just a fucking good feeling to close your eyes for a while and forget about the rest of the bloody world, then wake up what feels like moments later and realise you’ve just skipped through nine hours of existence for free. I’m telling you, Angel, She knew what She was doing when she created sleep. I’ll give Her that one.”

“Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree then,” Aziraphale replied, even as he was helping pick out bed linen that suited them both. “Sleep still seems like a terrible thing to me. Those poor humans leave themselves so vulnerable for the eight most dangerous hours of the day and to top it all off, their dreams aren’t even always pleasant. They have nightmares, Crowley, _nightmares_, the poor things.”

A lady looking at sheets a few feet away from them gave Aziraphale a funny look and hurriedly walked off, ending the argument for the time being.

Taking the inconvenient snore as an opportunity to take a break, Aziraphale stands and stretches. Perhaps the interruption was a good thing – he does so frequently forget to take a breather when he’s concentrating on a task and he knows that can’t be healthy in the long run.

He briefly considers fixing himself a pot of tea and seeing if he can use a cheeky miracle to salvage his notes, but another, softer snore draws him to the bedroom to check on Crowley.

Aziraphale walks in to see him spread out on his stomach like a starfish, one bare leg poking out from underneath the duvet. This is a Crowley far less dignified than he ever lets himself be when he’s awake and the fact Aziraphale is the only one he’s permitted to see him this way, makes his heart race in a way that he’s come to expect in matters where Crowley is involved. He makes his way over to the bed and carefully slides Crowley’s leg back under the covers before gently brushing a strand of hair from his forehead and pressing a soft kiss to the newly exposed skin. Asleep, even as undignified as he is at times, Aziraphale can see glimpses of the angel before the fall.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he brought his book through here and sat with Crowley while he read, if for nothing else than the sake of being close to him.

His mind made up, Aziraphale collects the novel he’s been meaning to read for the past few weeks, turns off all the lights in the house, and settles down on the bed next to his demon, on top of the covers.

“Let there be the softest, gentlest light,” he whispers, fearing that turning on the bedside light will wake Crowley. To his relief, the small warm glow now hovering over his book doesn’t seem to bother Crowley at all. Figuring that he’s already abusing his miracles tonight, he throws in another one to stop Crowley snoring. There was no point in him being startled every half hour when it was really very easy to cure.

After a few hours of reading scored by the soft sound of Crowley’s deep breathing, Aziraphale holds his breath as the demon suddenly turns in bed and throws an arm around his waist. He’s sure he must have done it by accident – after all, he _is_ fast asleep – but it makes him feel safe and warm in a way that has nothing to do with actual safety and warmth. Grinning from ear to ear, he continues exploring the plights of poor Emma and her ill-advised romantic meddling.

Had he not been concentrating on his book so intently, he would have noticed a similar (albeit far sleepier) grin on the demon next to him.

* * *

After that first night, Aziraphale spends every night next to Crowley in bed, reading through the night while his partner sleeps. Initially, he stays above the covers, but Crowley insists on having an arm around him every night, always above the covers. This, after a while, leads Aziraphale to worry that he’s getting cold which leads him to begin climbing under the covers so that when the inevitable arm snakes its way around his waist, it’s at least still under the duvet. This, of course, also necessitates far more comfortable attire which, for Aziraphale, means removing his coat, waistcoat, trousers and undoing several buttons on his shirt. He’s usually always fastidiously dressed so being this naked feels strange, but if it means that Crowley and his cuddly arm stay warm all night, he doesn’t mind.

Before the Nopeocalypse, in the six thousand years Aziraphale and Crowley had known each other, they had only properly touched four times. Aziraphale knows because the memory of each seemed burned into his skin. At first, they had feared that being a holy being, any physical contact Aziraphale might have with Crowley would cause him harm, but after Aziraphale drunkenly bumped into Crowley one night after leaving a raging party in ancient Rome, they discovered this wasn’t the case. After that, it was purely social awkwardness that kept them from venturing any further than friendly nods and polite conversation. Discovering how much Crowley craves physical contact has been quite the eye-opener. Aziraphale blames it on Crowley’s inner snake and insists that most nights he’s more python than man, despite Crowley’s half-hearted protests to the contrary.

Tonight, finding himself unusually distracted from his book about the history of movie musicals by the arm draped around him and how peaceful the man attached to it looks, he decides to try something new and daring. Setting his book down on the table next to him, Aziraphale sinks further under the covers and slips his own arm around Crowley. In response, the demon pulls him closer, so that there is now hardly any space between them and Aziraphale’s head is resting on his chest.

And that’s where Aziraphale spends the night – wide awake, lost in thought, but with the steady, reassuring rhythm of Crowley’s heartbeat against his cheek.

* * *

The day after the all-night cuddle, Crowley announces that he’s going out for a few hours. When he returns, he’s holding a carefully wrapped box and wearing the kind of eager expression Aziraphale never would have thought him capable of when they first met.

“Did I miss an anniversary?” asks Aziraphale, taking the package from Crowley confusedly. “Or have we decided to start celebrating birthdays after all?”

“No, nothing like that. This is partly because it’s something you seem to need and partly because I just wanted to spoil you.” Crowley is beaming as he removes his sunglasses and sets them down on their telephone table. “Go on, open it.”

Deciding he’s never received a gift from Crowley that hasn’t been perfect and having no reason to doubt that this one will be similarly wonderful, he carefully undoes the wrapping paper, pulls out the box inside it and lifts the lid to reveal a breathtaking off-white pyjama set.

“Darling, this is so beautiful,” he says, pulling it out to get a better look at it. The fabric is impossibly light and soft and smooth in his hand.

“It’s 100% mulberry silk,” says Crowley, seemingly unable to contain his glee at how much Aziraphale likes his gift. “I figured it can’t be comfortable wearing your everyday clothes to bed every night, even without several of the layers, so I wanted to get you something just as luxurious as your other clothes, but more comfortable for bed. I take it you like it?”

“It’s perfect,” Aziraphale says, closing the small distance between them to kiss him. “Goodness, Crowley, this may well be the most beautiful, thoughtful gift I’ve ever received. How can I ever thank you enough?”

“You’ve thanked me plenty in other ways.” Crowley presses a kiss to Aziraphale’s nose and then grins wickedly. “Besides, it’s not completely selfless – I’m very much looking forward to seeing how devastatingly handsome you look in them later tonight.”

Aziraphale laughs and kisses him again, and this one is longer, full of everything he’s feeling but doesn’t quite have the words to express in this moment.

“Fuck, I just love you so much, Angel.”

Aziraphale freezes for a moment while Crowley is searching his face, hopefully, probably checking that he hadn’t misread the signs from Aziraphale. They’ve both known that what they feel for each other is as deep as that for quite a while now – they wouldn’t have moved in together had they not – but it’s the first time either of them has said it out loud. It’s a lot to process. A second later though, it’s like a balloon has been set loose in his chest. He suddenly feels he might float away at any moment.

Crowley _loves_ him and was even vulnerable enough to be the first to say it.

And when he thinks about it, Crowley has always made himself the more vulnerable of the two of them. _He_ was the one who first dared to strike up a conversation between them. _He_ was the one who kept approaching Aziraphale with offers of friendship, despite the very real risk to himself. _He_ was the one who came back to Aziraphale after their nineteenth-century argument. _He_ was the one who said in the softest tone he had ever heard anyone use, let alone a demon, that he would take Aziraphale anywhere he wanted to go. _He_ was the one who had cried at losing the most important person in the world to him. And now he’s the one putting honestly into words what he’s felt for years, hoping that the man he loves will say it back.

And suddenly Aziraphale understands it – why sharing sleep with someone is such a big deal. All those hours Crowley is asleep, looking however undignified he looks, knowing that there’s a chance anything could happen in those hours, knowing that there is an entity from the opposite side of the ongoing celestial war who, up until embarrassingly recently, continued to choose duty over his heart, likely not knowing if the entity would go back to choosing his duty – it’s all vulnerability. And more than that, _better_ than that, it’s all trust.

Crowley trusts him. Crowley loves him. And the least he can do after being on the forefront of someone’s mind for six millennia is to let him know that he’s been at the forefront of his.

“I love you, too, Crowley. With all my heart,” says Aziraphale softly. “And to prove it, I’m going to try it. Tonight.”

“What… _that?_” asks Crowley, his yellow eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“No not _that._ I’m going to try sleeping.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Angel, I appreciate it, but you don’t have to sleep just because you think that’s what I want.” Crowley takes his hand and begins tracing circles across the back of it with his thumb. “It’s more than enough for me knowing that you just want to be close to me every night, that you chose to ever climb into that bed in the first place, that you wanted to share a home with me. Being able to say_ ‘Honey, I’m hoooome’ _in the most annoying voice possible whenever I walk through the front door already makes me the luckiest bastard alive. You’ve given me so much.”

“I understand that, darling, of course, and I deeply appreciate it. The thing is, however, without you realising it, you’ve been teaching me a lot over the past few millennia. And something I’ve learned is that if I can’t trust you for eight hours every night, Anthony J. Crowley, I can’t trust anyone. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll sleep.”

Crowley is just staring at him, dumbfounded, and Aziraphale feels a small sense of pride at having rendered him somewhat speechless.

“Perchance to dream,” he adds, unable to suppress a smile at his silly joke. And though Crowley rolls his eyes, he’s smiling too.

“Isn’t that about suicide?”

“Ah. Right you are. Maybe not the best quote for this occasion.”

Crowley laughs and kisses him again by way of reply.

Later that night, curled up in the first pair of pyjamas he’s ever owned, with Crowley’s strong arms wrapped around him, Aziraphale falls asleep and dreams of a garden, a wall, a demon, and the very first storm.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, Aziraphale's love language is 100% gift-giving and Crowley's is a mixture of quality time and physical touch.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! ♥


End file.
